Quillbending
by YFate
Summary: Various drabbles set in the ATLAverse. No distinct pairings or ideas, just whatever tickles my fancy and sparks my muse.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc. of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." This story is for entertainment purposes only.

**QUILLBENDING**

_A/N: I have only seen up to Book 2, Volume 1 (2X5 "Avatar Day"). I probably bungled this scene completely, which captured my idle fancy for a drabble idea after I read about it in another fic. Fate_

Pairing: Zuko/Jin (Zutara)

Word Count: 193

Rating: K+

Warning: Lime

_**Cursed**_

For a moment, he felt himself responding. Her lips were warm, soft, something new and something sweet. He wanted to explore them, to feel them quiver and tremble beneath his as they were doing now, but through his own manipulation, and not her own. He wanted to crush her to him, and explore all the interesting possibilities her delightful mouth promised, but he couldn't, he wouldn't, for she was not the one who whispered across his troubled dreams at night, and he couldn't do that to her. She deserved better.

So he broke away, and stumbled into a run, hoping she would not follow, for he didn't know how he could rein in the sudden fire in his blood and in his loins if she did. But Jin deserved better than to be just something he could use to take his inner frustrations out on, she deserved better of---and from---him. He would not shame himself, or her, by using her warm body to release the torment pent up inside him, for the pretty Earth Kingdom girl could never be what he truly wanted.

Damn waterbending peasant. She haunted him, even now, curse her…


	2. Reunion

**QUILLBENDING**

Pairing: Pakku/Kanna

Word Count: 389

Rating: K

_**Reunion**_

The woman stood alone on the icy shore to welcome them. The chilly breeze tugged restlessly at the gray braids that curled over her weathered cheeks, and her blue eyes narrowed as a proud figure, his hair now white with age, descended the lowered plank and stopped to study her for a long, silent moment.

"I see you have done well for yourself, Kanna." His voice was heavy with sarcasm, his eyes hard and glittering, though his heart ached at the very sight of her. He had dreamed of this meeting, and wondered why it was he could not say anything else now that it had come.

"I have, haven't I, Pakku?" Her voice was dry, her eyes---as beautiful as ever he remembered---faintly amused. She looked up at him, and said bluntly, "You've grown old, Pakku."

"So have you, Kanna," he retorted, offended and showing it in the way his expression thinned into a tight-lipped scowl.

"You're still as stuffy as always, I see," Kanna noted tartly.

"And I see you're still as stubborn as an old rhino." He folded his arms across his chest with a glare.

"Your hair is white now. And thinning."

"You've gotten shorter, Kanna."

"So I have. Age does that, you know." Her eyes glinted at him, crinkling up at the corners in amusement.

"Ha! You're still as sharp-tongued as ever, I see." His laugh was genuine, as was his admiration. It had never died, though his heart had, all those many years ago.

"It's good to see you again, Pakku. I'd forgotten how---stimulating---you can be." Kanna's blue eyes turned soft, as did her smile.

"And stuffy. Don't forget stuffy." There was a warm glint in his eye as they turned their steps toward the distant village huddled among the snowy valleys below.

"Huh. You wouldn't let me," Kanna retorted with dry humor. She paused, and looked up at him, her eyes studying his earnestly. "The children---they are well?"

"They are. You would be proud of them, Kanna," he said gently, remembering the granddaughter who looked so much like her.

"I am, Pakku, I am." The old woman said smartly, walking ahead of him to wave at the emerging people of the Southern Water Tribe. Pakku watched her, his smile sardonic as he thought idly to himself that it was good he had come.


	3. Silent Song

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc. of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." This story is for entertainment purposes only.

**QUILLBENDING**

Pairing: Zuko/Song

Word Count: 199

Rating: K

Warning: Angst

_**Silent Song**_

Her song is silence. He would not take her pity when she offered it, perhaps he would take this gift instead.

She could have spoken, and named the two lonely travelers who took such low advantage of their kindness, absconding with their only ostrich-horse in the dark of night. She could have had them tracked and followed, could have had them brought back and hung as the meanest beggars and thieves. But when the village men asked if she saw anything, she said nothing, and only turned away as she had at the shoji screen, her brown eyes aged far beyond her short years, and sad.

For she had lost hope that night. He had stolen it, just as he had stolen her heart and her horse. The years would go on, and she would grow old, and her silence would grow until her heart was lost in it, and her song lay like dead ashes in the coldest, burnt pit of utter betrayal.

But it was with perhaps bitter irony that she might have bought him _his_ chance with her silence. For she had given him time, perhaps, to learn what she had lost, and find hope anew.


	4. Conflicted

**QUILLBENDING**

_A/N: This little drabble is set in "The Cave of Two Lovers," and pieces were picked off of the last episode of season one. I probably bungled the whole thing, which is entirely due to my spotty memory of both episodes. Blame the brain---or my lack thereof. ;o) _

Pairing: Aang/Katara (Zutara)

Word Count: 247

Rating: K

_**Conflicted**_

As the torch flared one last time between them, they each leaned forward, their eyes half-closed with both tension and curiosity. As the last embers sparked and turned an angry, defiant red, Katara could feel his warm breath feathering across her trembling lips. She leaned closer, her eyes closing, as the embers glowed and died, and thought that she might receive her first, real kiss.

But something jerked on her shoulder, tugging at her attention and taunting her from the back of her mind with guilty knowledge. Her eyes widened, and her treacherous thoughts wailed, _I can't do this! I can't…Aang, I'm sorry!_

For there was another that burned in her darkest memories, one who had etched himself in fire across her guilty consciousness.

_"But I---**I**_ _rise with the sun!"_

Damn him! He mocked her, even now, when all was lost in desolate darkness. She looked up, trying to blink back the sudden, sharp tears in her eyes at the conflicts held secretly in her heart, and she gasped as she saw the luminescent stars spangled above.

"Aang---look!"

As her young companion stared up in awe, Katara smiled, the tears still sparkling in her deep, blue eyes.

_You may haunt me yet in the dark, Prince Zuko, but **I** will always rise with the moon---and stars._

And suddenly she was enfolded in Aang's arms, and Katara hugged him back, pushing the fiery conflicts of betrayed loyalties and forlorn love aside to grasp at what she had---a friend.


	5. Envy

**QUILLBENDING**

_A/N: I'm going through some of my old bits and pieces. I completely forgot about this one. Any critique is welcome. Thanks, Fate_

Characters: Azula

Word Count: 652

Rating: PG13

Warning: Mild reference to a certain body part.

_**Envy**_

He had the one thing she didn't have and couldn't get. It infuriated her, that he could have it through no striving of his own, but through circumstance and birth, something entirely out of her ability to control. It didn't matter if he was eldest, which he was, but hadn't Father proved himself that _that_ small disadvantage was negligible if you played your cards right? He had seized the throne denied him by birth and how could she do anything less? It was in her birthright, so to speak.

Fire was restless and ever-changing, ever-cleansing and ever-consuming. She consumed her weakness, as her brother allowed weakness to consume him. Poor little Zuzu. He didn't, couldn't, understand what true power required---all or nothing. And she was willing to give all. She had proven it time and again. She was unmatched, a fire-bending prodigy and master tactician. She used every weapon the Gods had given her---beauty, cunning, intelligence---to become what she was, unmatched, and unmatchable.

And still he had what she could never have, damn him. He was a fool and a weak, emotional one at that. She could pull on his heart-strings as easily as she could pull on a puppet's strings and make him dance for her. He was much like a puppet or, perhaps, like one of the dolls she had set aside with lost childhood. She could manipulate him so easily---too easily. It was a shame, that he and she could come from the same blood, the same seed. The gods had favored her with all that could have been his, had he been ruthless enough to use them to his own advantage and not be used by them for hers.

But the irony of Fate was that he had been born with the one thing she had not. Such a little thing, or it had been, when last she saw it---when both of them were small and allowed to bathe together and shared the same lazy nurses who could not be bothered with bathing the children separately. She had teased him, and laughed, but the nurses had been quick to scold her, and she had learned from an early age what truly made a man a man. Not honor, not strength, not ability or intelligence, but a single, silly thing that hung absurdly in front of them instead of being neatly tucked away between their legs.

It was that which separated them, and made him---weak, foolish, emotional brat that he was---the heir and her just the spare, the other, the nothing. It was that which had had their father banish him from the Nation, and yet not from the throne, for darling Father, the humorless bastard, had refused to name another in Zuko's place, though his shame was obvious, his very nature too pathetic to ever hold worthy the Iron Throne.

But he was a boy, and she was not, and that was the one thing she could never be, and was thus unacceptable in her father's disdainful eyes. No matter what she did or how she proved herself, she could never be more than just a reminder that she was not what that poor, pathetic prince was---a man.

Unless she killed him. Then Father would have no choice but to name her heir, for there would be no other for him to name.

Sad, how brutal politics could be. She hadn't wanted to kill him. He was her brother, after all. There was a time, long ago, when she had been small enough to fear the lightning storms of the monsoonal season and would crawl into his bed, shivering with terror, to be held by him and soothed into sleep. He was strong then, as she was not. Pity it was so different now that their roles had become reversed. But she now controlled the lightning, and she would control her own destiny.

The throne demanded no less.


	6. Love Unknown

**QUILLBENDING**

_A/N: Another snippet I found. After-Avatar drabble, angsty._

Characters: Katara/Pakku

Word Count: 216

Rating: PG

_**Love Unknown**_

She claims to wear it in order to honor the memory of her mother, and her mother's mother, who passed on more than five years before. It is a simple thing, though carved with a careful hand into beautiful lines gracefully cut into the delicate ivory. Once white, it had aged into a warm creamy-yellow color, and the old master who had once carved it for the young woman he loved smiles to see it proudly hung around her young throat.

Still, he worries that she uses it to fend off the young men returned to the village and eager for her hand, for she is a war heroine and a formidable water-bending master, as well as being thought beautiful in their eyes. By wearing the traditional betrothal necklace of her grandmother, they believe she is already claimed, and her silence on the issue lets them keep believing it.

"You waste your youth," Master Pakku cautions his young student. "There is more to the world than fighting and healing, young Katara. I worry that you push away all the young men in the village. Your brother has found happiness and married his true love. I fear you will not allow yourself that same contentment. You have never known love…"

She just smiles sadly, and turns away.


End file.
